Answers about DeptOps, ownership, work, and plans.

DeptOps is department and team operations software from LOB Labs LLC. It gives your team one clear place to manage responsibilities, work, forms, and the things that need attention, while giving managers visibility into overdue work, ownership gaps, and other operational exceptions.

DeptOps is built for real departments: facilities, operations, IT support, HR and people ops, finance and admin, and similar teams. The same operating model works for one department or across an organization with multiple departments and subdepartments.

Register for a free account, create your organization, add your first department, and add people. Then create a few responsibilities with owners, add some work, and open My Work and Needs Attention to confirm the loop. Free covers up to 5 users and 1 department, with no credit card required.

No. The Free plan does not require a credit card. You can upgrade from Organization settings when you need more capacity or paid features.

No. You can add people to the directory before they sign in. Organization admins send an invite when they want that person to access DeptOps. Inviting is a separate step from creating the person record.

DeptOps is not a complicated project-management system. It is built around ongoing departmental ownership. Responsibilities are what you own, work is what you need to do, forms are structured information you collect while doing it, and Needs Attention surfaces what requires action.

Five parts work together: Responsibilities (what we own), Work (what we need to do), Forms (what we collect while doing it), Visibility (what is happening), and Needs Attention (what requires action).

Yes. DeptOps works for a single team and scales across departments and subdepartments. Add people, organize the structure, and give leaders visibility without changing how individual teams work day to day.

My Work shows each person overdue, due today, blocked, upcoming, and completed-today work, plus backup responsibilities. Needs Attention brings operational exceptions forward for managers. Department overview and organization reports help leaders see health without another wall of charts.

A responsibility is an ongoing area of ownership for a department, not a one-time task. Examples include payroll processing, building access control, or vendor onboarding. Assign a primary owner, keep a backup when needed, attach resources, and connect related work.

Responsibility health is Critical when the primary owner is missing or inactive, or when critical-priority linked work is overdue. It is Needs Attention when a required backup is missing or inactive, or when linked work is overdue (non-critical), blocked, or due soon. Rejected forms appear as separate Needs Attention items and do not change responsibility health by themselves.

A backup owner is the standing second owner for an area. Temporary coverage is a time-bound covering person for a period of unavailability, with an optional through date. Coverage is for a defined handoff window. Backup is ongoing redundancy.

Yes. Use Role Change / Transfer on a person to move primary ownership, backups, participation, temporary coverage, open work, and recurring work definitions while preserving operational history. Offboarding uses a similar flow when someone leaves.

DeptOps supports one-time and recurring work with priorities, due dates, checklists, required forms, dependencies, reminders, and completion history. Work can be assigned to a person or owned by a department for team-owned items.

When you create recurring work, DeptOps stores a work definition and generates upcoming occurrences from the due date and recurrence pattern. Occurrences are created for a near-term window (about the next 90 days), then additional occurrences are generated as time moves forward.

My Work is a focused personal queue. It surfaces overdue, due today, blocked, no-due-date, upcoming, procedure reviews, completed-today work, and backup responsibilities so each person can see today's priorities first without digging through department lists.

No. Free includes one-time work, people and departments, responsibilities and ownership, basic forms, and My Work. Recurring work starts on the Team plan and above.

Needs Attention is the view that brings operational exceptions forward so managers can focus on what actually needs intervention. Notifications tell you what happened. Needs Attention tells you what requires action.

DeptOps can surface high or critical overdue work, blocked work, missing ownership or backup coverage, rejected required forms, form reviews waiting for approval, overdue procedure reviews, template updates, and other actionable operational exceptions. What appears depends on role and plan.

Basic operational visibility is part of getting organized on Free. Full Needs Attention is included on Team and above, along with recurring work, attachments, and customizable dashboards.

Forms capture structured operational evidence such as inspections, checks, confirmations, notes, and photos. Attach forms to the work that requires them so evidence stays connected to the activity that produced it. Work can require a form before it can be completed.

Enable Requires manager review when a submission should not count as complete until a manager approves it. That is useful for inspections, safety checks, and other evidence that needs sign-off. Form approvals are available on Business plans and above.

Free includes basic forms. Form approvals and related Business-tier capabilities start on Business. Attachments for related files are available on Team and above.

People can be Users, Department managers, or Organization admins. Admins create departments and manage invites, roles, billing, and organization settings. Managers add people in departments they manage and create responsibilities and work for the areas they run.

Yes. Organization admins can import people with a CSV that includes name, email, and title, then invite people when they are ready to sign in.

Yes. Departments are the operating units for people, responsibilities, and work. Subdepartments nest under parents when your plan includes department hierarchy. Hierarchy is available on Business plans and above. Subdepartments count toward your department limit.

Business and Organization plans add stronger cross-department visibility, including organization-wide views, advanced reporting, and audit history, so leaders can see how departments are actually doing without changing how each team works.

No. DeptOps uses flat organization pricing with user and department capacity limits per tier. You do not pay seat-license math for every person who needs access.

Free is $0 / month for 5 users and 1 department. Team is $29 / month for 50 users and 5 departments. Business is $49 / month for 250 users and 15 departments. Organization is $99 / month for unlimited users and unlimited departments. Compare full feature lists on the Pricing page.

Existing people and departments keep working. New invites or departments are blocked until you upgrade or reduce usage. Capacity-gated actions stay limited until the account is within plan limits or on a higher plan.

Yes. Register free, run your department, and upgrade from Organization settings when you need recurring work, full Needs Attention, reporting, hierarchy, form approvals, or more capacity.

Paid subscriptions are billed through our payment processor (currently Stripe). We do not store full payment card numbers on DeptOps servers. Fees are generally charged in advance for the billing period, and except where required by law they are non-refundable once a billing period has begun.

We may retry billing, notify administrators, and limit new invites, departments, or other capacity-gated actions until the account is brought current.

DeptOps uses encrypted transport (HTTPS), hashed passwords, role-based access inside organizations, and optional multi-factor authentication. You are responsible for safeguarding credentials used to access your account.

You and your organization retain ownership of Customer Content such as people records, responsibilities, work items, forms, submissions, and related operational data. LOB Labs processes that content as needed to provide, maintain, secure, and improve the service.

Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Cookies Policy are linked in the site footer under Legal. Those pages explain eligibility, acceptable use, billing, Minnesota governing law, retention, cookies, and how to reach LOB Labs LLC at info@Lob-Labs.com.

You may stop using DeptOps at any time. Organization administrators can close the organization from Settings → Account after confirming the organization name and completing security verification (authenticator code if MFA is enabled, otherwise an email code). Cancel any active subscription in Billing first. Upon closure, access ends and live organization data is permanently deleted. Backup copies may remain until retention expires. You can also contact info@Lob-Labs.com or support@DeptOps.com for help.

The How-to section has practical guides for setting up a department, creating responsibilities, managing work, using Needs Attention, building forms, handling coverage and transfers, and organizing departments.

Insights publishes articles on ownership, department operations, and related topics. Use Insights for practical thinking and How-to for step-by-step product instructions.

Visit the Contact page for sales@DeptOps.com, support@DeptOps.com, and legal or privacy requests at info@Lob-Labs.com. LOB Labs LLC is based in Scott County, Minnesota. DeptOps is a product of LOB Labs LLC. You can also follow LOB Labs on LinkedIn and X from the Company links in the footer.